Shooter on the run in Paris after second gun attack on journalists within four days

Updated
Tue Nov 19 08:26:19 EST 2013

Photo

Police released CCTV of an alleged shooter in a Paris tramway.

AFP: Prefecture de Police de Paris

Armed police have been posted outside the main news operations in Paris after a second gun attack on journalists within four days.

Police say they have a helicopter circling the main thoroughfare, the Champs-Élysées, to track down an armed man suspected of having shot a man at a newspaper office in central Paris.

The 27-year-old male victim, who was a photographer's assistant, is fighting for his life after being shot at the offices of French daily Liberation.

The man was shot in the chest and stomach with a pump-action shotgun and is in a critical condition, police and the newspaper said.

The shooter fled the scene and was still at large several hours after the attack, which occurred around 10:15am local time.

Just over an hour later, witnesses described shots being fired, also from a pump-action shotgun, outside the headquarters of Societe Generale bank in the La Defense business district.

Police said they were also checking a statement by a car driver who claimed to have been briefly taken hostage by a gunman near La Defense and forced to drop him off close to the Champs-Élysées.

Gunman warned senior editor "Next time, I will not miss you."

Police could not immediately confirm a link between all of Monday's reported incidents but said that CCTV images of the shooter suggested he was the same man who had stormed into the Paris headquarters of news channel BFMTV on Friday.

In that incident, the gunman emptied several cartridges from his shotgun before warning a senior editor: "Next time, I will not miss you."

Francisco Alvarez witnessed Monday's shooting at La Defense.

"I saw this guy with a cap and a shotgun, a pump-action shotgun, in his hand," Mr Alvarez said.

"I don't think he was necessarily targeting anyone, he shot in the air then into a window. The first shot shocked everyone into silence and then the second caused a general panic. Then he ran away down the steps to the street."

As news of the Liberation shooting broke, Police were quickly deployed at major media offices in Paris for fear of further attacks.

Newspaper staff traumatised after the shooting in their office

Liberation executive Nicolas Demorand said the shooting in the paper's entrance hall had left staff traumatised.

"When you have someone with a shotgun coming into a newspaper's offices in a democracy, it is very, very serious, whatever the mental state of the person," Mr Demorand said.

"If papers and other media have to become bunkers, something has gone wrong in our society."

A police security cordon had been erected around Liberation's editorial offices in central Paris.

The newspaper said the injured man worked as an assistant to one of the photographers for its Next supplement.

Liberation journalist Anastasia Vecrin described the horrifying scene she was confronted with on what was otherwise just a normal Monday morning.

"I was just arriving for work and I saw a man lying on the ground, holding his stomach and with blood everywhere," she said.

"I met two of the reception staff who were completely white and who told me 'we've just been shot at'."

Interior minister Manuel Valls says that everything possible would be done to apprehend the shooter.

"This individual is on the run and he represents a real danger. We will do everything we can to arrest him," Mr Valls said.